A busy 2 Weeks...

A little over a month ago, I gave my old television and tv cabinet to Jerri Ann....we have been working on getting rid of all the super heavy stuff in our home that we can't move by ourselves anymore...Randy got the roll top desk and Jerri Ann got the TV....both weigh in at over 200 pounds each and it was all Bill and I could do to move them when we needed to shampoo carpets or paint or any other reason.  Bill had received a gift certificate for Best Buy from his employer for his 10 year anniversary.  So, we made a purchase of the new 50 inch flat screen and then I needed something to put it on.  We had it on our coffee table till this weekend when the entertainment center got completed.

I found the dresser at our local antique store.  It was in excellent shape and just the right size for what I was wanting to do....I'd already done the shopping route and didn't find any cabinets that I liked in my price range!  Unfortunately, I didn't think about taking a before picture until I had the cabinet in a dozen pieces.

This has kept me occupied now for the past 2 weeks....the first weekend, I took it all apart and sanded everything down...then, the second weekend, Bill and I worked it over!  I wanted it to me taller and the baskets I had purchased were not going to fit into the drawer space. So, I came up with this idea...we took the top of the dresser off...it was veneer and I wanted a wood stained top and that would not happen with the veneer top.  We cut the top down to size to use as the bottom of the dresser.  The dresser had straight feet on it and we just nailed the table top to the bottom of the dresser feet.  We then purchased some 'feet' from Lowe's and added them to the bottom.  This gave me the room I needed to add the basket and it raised the dresser up by another 6 inches.  The top row of drawers is no longer drawers.  We removed the fronts from the drawers and Bill put cup hinges inside of the drawer fronts and added a shelf to the inside (where the drawer used to be)...this makes it so I can open the drawer fronts and get access to my DVD player and receiver.  Luckily, the new Direct Whole house genie system doesn't have to have line of site on the 'slave' box so I don't have to keep the receiver door open when we are watching tv. 

After sanding it all down and rebuilding it to what I wanted, I painted it with homemade caulk paint.  Oh, I REALLY like that paint!  I had some Benjamin Moore Linen White that I'd purchased last year for another small project and all I had to do was mix some plaster of Paris in it to get my caulk paint.  I'd researched a bunch of homemade recipes and would have liked to have used the Calcium Carbonate recipe but I couldn't find any of that around here.  The Plaster of Paris worked fine, I just couldn't mix much up at a time or it would get hard on me before I was finished painting. It did stay great if I placed it in the refrigerator between coats.  It dries to a nice, super hard finish...Oops...I'm getting ahead of myself ....I first added a coat of primer to the veneer top.  I know the blogs all say I don't have to sand or prime but since it was really glossy and it was going to be used as a shelf, I wasn't taking any chances.  So, after priming it, I gave the whole thing the first coat of caulk paint, then added brown paint to the spots that I wanted to distress and then gave it a second, final coat of caulk paint.  After it was good and dry, I sanded down my edges and on my brown distressed spots and then glazed it all over and wiped it down.  After that was allowed to dry for a day, I gave it all a good coat of Johnson's Paste Wax...let that dry for about 30 minutes and then buffed it to this lovely sheen....it came out beautiful!!  The top was stained with a mix of pecan and walnut stain and then I added 5 coats of poly protection.  We bought window stop to add some interest and put it under the top drawers and around the bottom edge...just what it needed to give it some detail.  Added new hinges and it was done!  I LOVE the hinges!

The bottom two images are closer to the actual color of the cabinet...the top image is a bit too yellow.
It turned out exactly how I had envisioned it and it works perfectly as a flat screen television cabinet with plenty of storage for movies and such.  It was not a cheap redo...we have almost $200.00 in it with the price of the original dresser and the hinges, wood for shelves and back, feet, trim and the wood top but anything this size that I looked at was way over 400.00 and not nearly as nice.  All in all, I'm really happy with it!